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My best friend and I haven’t been able to get back into the kitchen to finish our blueberry hand soap due to the storms – we both returned from work and just after we had finished packing our “just in case” bags, the sirens started going off. After being locked in the basement for an hour (okay, hiding from the RAs in the suite. Hey, I live in the basement and I didn’t want to join the other two floors in our small hallway…) we come to find that a tornado had been confirmed in the county, and one had touched down in our town. Yikes! That explains all of the downed branches and the metal in the one tree on campus. I hope everyone else who was in these storms’ paths are safe and sound, and no more deaths or destruction will happen.

Using this tutorial from Savvy Housekeeping. We’ve added two bags of blueberry tea and we are currently waiting (impatiently on my part) for it to boil. However, the tea is steeping and turning the water darker. Why are we doing this you may ask? We’re both broke college students, and the only ones who provide hand soap for our bathroom. I bought three bars of soap for $1.25, and I already had the blueberry tea mix. I did not purchase glycerine (I repeat – I’m a broke college student). And here we go! It’s finally hot enough to start melting the soap.

So far we have discovered this:

The soap took less than three minutes to grate.

Our water (due to the blueberry tea and our cheap Ivory soap I’m assuming) is a murky brown instead of the pretty red it was with just the tea.

We added two bars of soap because ours was so cheap.

Our soap chips would NOT melt if we took our water off of the heat.

We added soap chips little by little, and they took longer than a minute to melt, however our chips were a LOT larger than hers.

I plan on adding some vanilla to…enhance the scent, as the blueberry has faded to the background, and blueberry vanilla soap sounds good.

It’s not difficult! I do have to let it sit some, so I will inform you tomorrow on how it goes…

Update: No matter how cheap your soap is, you do not need two bars. Our soap ended up looking like the consistence of a human brain. We’re going to heat it up again tonight, and add some more water…

It was the best I could do for those injured and killed in yesterday’s shooting at Chardon High. Three students have now lost their life, and the remaining two are still hospital, and I hope these two recover.

Edit: At 9:30 this evening, my best friend and roommate lit five candles – one for each victim. May the two still alive make a full recovery.

This is twenty minutes away from where I went to high school. I went there on multiple occasions to march during football games. I watched the fireworks they set off on the Fourth of July from their lawn. A suspect is in custody. One eyewitness said they saw him with a gun and take a shot. I read somewhere he attended a program for “at risk” teens. Chardon is a quiet town; it is not some place you would expect this to happen. I drive there often to pick up supplies for my horse from the closest Tractor Supply. It’s horrible to know this happens in our schools – this isn’t the first time this has happened. Keep Chardon in your thoughts today.

“In 24 hours, Australia could save one million square kms of ocean forever — setting up the largest marine reserve in the world and preserving thousands of delicate species. But they will need a global outcry to beat out commercial fishing and mining companies hoping to destroy the plan.

The Australian government is holding a public consultation, hoping it will give them a mandate to take a big step towards a sustainable future for our oceans and our planet. But the reserve will cost money and without massive support right now, the short term financial interests of industry could beat out our hopes for a safe future for our seas.

The consultation closes Friday in Australia — send a submission to the consultation now, then send this page to everyone!”